Solon Springs land donation continues legacy of conservation
Aug. 28—SOLON SPRINGS — The Solon Springs School District has another school forest.
At its July 17 meeting, the Solon Springs School Board accepted a donation of 11.25 acres of forest land from Richard Flint for educational purposes.
The parcel had been enrolled under the Managed Forest Law program, according to Matt Blaylock with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources's Division of Forestry, but Flint really wanted to leave it to a school. He and his late wife, Carol, began communicating with the school district last year about donating the land.
"It's because of my wife, who was a teacher through many years, and unfortunately she died before we could get it all done," Flint said, but they knew the donation would benefit students.
Flint, 88, was born and raised in Duluth,
according to an interview Flint participated in with the University of Minnesota Duluth.
He attended UMD for his undergraduate degree and went on to attend Northwestern University for law school. Upon graduating from law school, he moved back to Minnesota and practiced law in the Twin Cities.
Flint purchased the Douglas County land in 1958 and planted many of the red pine trees on the property by hand, according to Blaylock.
The property they donated is on the opposite side of Lake St. Croix from the school, near Hidden Greens Golf Course. The district also has an 80-acre industrial school forest south of the school on U.S. Highway 53, according to Environmental Education Coordinator Julie Fromm. The two parcels are roughly the same distance from the school, but the new donation offers a quieter, more remote spot where students can enjoy the forest.
"We'll put in some trails for snowshoeing, hiking, definitely tree identification, maybe taking kids camping — any kind of environmental education that just pertains to being outdoors," Fromm said.
Blaylock has known Flint, who has a summer home in Barnes, for decades. He said the former Minnesota attorney has a
long legacy of major conservation projects.
"We were just getting into it at that time when I was coming back, and so I was with that group of people," Flint said.
He pushed for enactment of the Minnesota Environmental Policy Act and the Minnesota Environmental Rights Act, which gave ordinary citizens the legal standing to protect Minnesota's natural environment, according to his daughter, Laurie Bremer. He was instrumental in organizing Minnesota's North Star chapter of the national Sierra Club and the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy; was involved in establishing the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness; and helped lobby for and defend the Boundary Waters Wilderness Act of 1978.
"His daughter was talking about how he started an initiative of taking disadvantaged youth from the (Twin Cities) metro area to the Boundary Waters, which was really neat to hear," said Solon Springs Superintendent Pete Hopke.
The initiative was set up as a memorial in memory of the Flints' son, Thomas, who died in a motorcycle accident in 1990.
With his children and grandchildren at his side, Flint held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new school forest July 7. Blaylock pointed out a variety of trees that could be seen from the road — spruce, balsam, red pine, jack pine, northern pin oak, white birch and more.
"This is a really special piece," Fromm said.